The seemingly fatal downward trajectory of Captain Whip Whittaker’s Atlanta-bound SouthJet Flight 227 is certainly the most spectacular and nerve-shredding descent in Robert Zemeckis’ Flight, but it is by no means the only one experienced in the sad, soulful melodrama.
a commanding, vanity-free performance by Washington
Having saved all but 6 of the 102 passengers under his captaincy by inverting, then gliding, his airliner into a field near a church (the film flows with an undercurrent of soul-saving spirituality), the heroic Whittaker (Denzel Washington) must then the face the reality of his demons: he was drunk when it happened. The night before, he was on a coke/booze binge with one of his flight attendants, Katerina (Nadine Velazquez, her nude full-frontal in the opening moments an early sign that Flight will pull no punches).
Denzel Washington is an actor who has banked so much good-will that his villains are instantly afforded depth and personality when they might not otherwise deserve it; imagine how vile his character in Training Day would have appeared if it was played by"¦ well, just about anybody else. Whittaker is a ravaged, barely functional substance abuser and Flight is ostensibly an account of a man struggling to bring the world into line with a false truth that his addiction dictates the world he lives by.
It’s a commanding, vanity-free performance by Washington; his paunchy, saggy features show a man on the cusp of middle age yet one who indulges in numbing agents like an ego-fuelled, responsibility-free 20-something. Washington’s layered, nuanced take on the anguish and blindly self-destructive spiral of Whittaker is some of the actor’s best work.
The narrative framework around Zemeckis’ study of alcoholism is not always as convincing as Washington’s contribution, though. A subtextual plot involving a fellow addict, heroin user Nicole (a terrific Kelly Reilly), is afforded lots of early screen time but eventually it peters out, despite establishing a strong bond over the first two acts. (It recalls the similarly fateful union between Nicholas Cage and Elisabeth Shue in Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas, still the high-water mark for drunken romantic fatalism.) Most troubling to the film’s momentum is a twist in the tail end that re-introduces (and fully explains the presence of) a hippy character played by the ever-reliable John Goodman; given the dramatic weight of the surrounding scenes, its tone seems incongruous to the rest of the proceedings.
All uniformly good in Washington’s shadow are Bruce Greenwood as the Pilot Union representative who backs Whip, Don Cheadle as the criminal lawyer assigned to save the airman’s career and Tamara Tunie and Brian Geraghty as the surviving crew members.
Flight represents a solid return to live-action work for Robert Zemeckis, who has spent the last decade in the digital-animation/mo-cap domain. His command of superb special effects work in the name of affecting drama (Forrest Gump; Contact) and penchant for male protagonists with alcohol problems (Romancing the Stone; Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) find fertile ground in John Gatlin’s Oscar-nominated script. As usual, Zemeckis’ use of classic pop tunes to convey mood and character is expertly executed. (A skill that began with his '78 debut, I Wanna Hold Your Hand.)
